kleptomania and other nonsense

image on pinterest via Soul Hunting, original source unknown

When I go to work on a Saturday, I have to take a whole day’s worth of food. I can’t leave the office at all. I do get to put up a Back in Five Minutes sign though that announces my lunch/toilet/coffee break! I know, I know, working on a Saturday AND no break? How lucky am I? Anyway. Sometimes the urge to go through other people’s desk drawers nearly overwhelms me though I’ve succumbed not once. NOT ONCE. (I have though, flipped through a notepad on someone’s desk and felt horribly guilty, even though it was all boring management meeting malarkey). Snooping doesn’t entice me but it has transpired that stealing from my fellow workmates is my bag.

Turns out I have a thing for the complimentary chocolates that are supposed to accompany the coffee one makes with the coffee machine in the boss’s office. Except one does not know how to make the coffee with the coffee machine in the boss’s office and instead, one steals the complimentary chocolates for an afternoon hit to help get one’s self through to five o’clock. I always feel terrified I’m going to get caught, like my boss might jump out from behind his huge desk chair and shout “AH-HA! Caughtcha, chocolate stealer!” He hasn’t done that once and I don’t really expect it to happen any time soon, but the fear is there nonetheless (the fear is no match for the desperate desire, need, for chocolate, to be sure).

Last week, while suffering through the late hours of the afternoon, willing the time on the phone display to click over to 4.59pm so I could put the phone on night mode (4.59pm! Rebel!), the office handyman came in and handed over a packet of Oreos.

“Ooh, thanks,” I say, even though I don’t particularly love Oreos. “Where did you get these from?”

“From the depths of Whatsherface’s desk drawers,” he answers, a cheeky smirk on his mug.

A kindred spirit! Another kleptomaniac! Although, actually, his affliction must be a step up from mine because he feels no remorse in going through drawers. The thought makes me want to dob him in. But then I realise there would probably be a lock put on the chocolate cupboard door and I regain my senses.

Also while at work on Saturday, a man ended his phone conversation with me by not saying ‘Goodbye’ or even just ‘Catch,’ but by saying “Over.” Whoa, wait a minute, buddy, these aren’t walkie-talkies we’re conversing with. This here’s a telemaphone, we don’t need to be saying “Over.” Weird, no?

Later, while I was musing the ways of the weird, I nearly jumped out of my seat when some bogan walked passed the window and kicked the metal letterbox slot box thingy out the front of the office. I looked at him through the window and decided he looked like he would pull my hair – or worse – if I went outside and said politely “Please, kind bogan, don’t be kicking the letter box,” so instead called him a choice of four-letter words from the safety of behind the reception desk.

Later, the bogan returned and came up into the little alcove thingymajig next to the office front door to light a cigarette. I considered going out to ask him to move on because when people smoke their cigarettes out the front of work, it fills up reception with stinky secondhand smoke and I’m forced to use Glen 20 to try and get rid of the smoke, only to remember once again that Glen 20 friggen reeks and I’d much prefer the cigarette smoke. Anyway, while this debate was raging in my little brain box, I watched the Bogan stick his fag in his mouth, pull one of the fake flowers out of the window display (sounds pretty tacky but the fake flowers out the front of work are actually pretty nice. Someone from one of the local art shops does it every couple of months), put the flowers under his arm and march off down the street.

The bogan stole our flowers! Kicked our letterbox and stole our flowers! Blow me down, this calls for a stolen chocolate or two. OR FOURTEEN.

In order to rebalance the chakras (I don’t even know what that means), I attended a garden party-style housewarming on Sunday at Girl Cousin’s new house. I was firm yet polite: “No champagne for me, thank you very much,” only to be tempted and seduced by those cold bubbles and consequently quaffed enough champagne to lull me to sleep on the car ride home. Before that though, as we were sitting in the garden, chatting about pleasant, nonsensical things, an unknown someone uttered some words that caused Boy Cousin and I to lock eyes and have one of those moments where you don’t even need to speak because you just know. The words? “Short-sheeting the bed.”

Moments later, after checking the coast was clear of the Girl Cousin, I slipped away inside the house, deceiving everyone with my powers of deception that I was attending the lavatory. Boy Cousin joined me mere seconds later in the bedroom Girl Cousin shares with her boyfriend and we attempted The Great Short-Sheeting Incident of 2011.

But as Boy Cousin recounted to everyone except Girl Cousin and Boyfriend of Girl Cousin, “there was too much laughing to achieve anything of consequence.” However poor our short-sheeting skillz are, surely we caused enough of an inconvenience when they collapsed into bed to relax after the exhausting exercise of hosting a garden party, only to become tangled in a mess of sheets. As I pointed out in Twitter, one simply cannot attend a house party without short-sheeting the hosts’ bed. Is simply bad manners not to.

And here ends my epic post of BS.

How was your weekend?